It’s been a couple of years since Peter Perrett, the former frontman and creative force behind the much loved but commercially under-performing Only Ones decided that he’d had enough of being a mere legend and got back into the musical ring. He had made a brief reappearance in the mid-1990s under the guise of The One, but that was all very fleeting, and Perrett’s infamous bad habits soon reasserted themselves until a short Only Ones’ reformation tour 10 years ago. Again, that was followed by a period of silence. Now, however, Perrett has put together Humanworld, a second solo album in as many years and hit the road with a fiery backing band that includes his sons, Jamie and Peter Junior.
Stepping onto the stage in a black box jacket and T-shirt, with his ever-present shades, Perrett looks in finer shape than might be imagined and launches straight into the almost sea shanty-ish “Baby Don’t Talk” from his time as The One. In fact, the evening sees Perrett pull on tunes from throughout his intermittent career, steering clear of the easy option of just banging out much-loved songs from his time in the Only Ones. Indeed, the lion’s share of Perrett’s appearance was drawn from his two solo sets, How The West Was Won and the soon-to-be-released Humanworld. The surprisingly sparse audience, however, was more than happy with that state of affairs, as he soon launched into the title track from his last disc, proclaiming his wish to “leave a dirty bomb at a Wall Street address” in his take-down of post-9/11 USA.
The venue might not have been packed but the audience did include Brighton resident, and an infamous face from the first wave of UK punk, Jordan – to whom Perrett dedicated “Hard To Say No”. There were also plenty of tunes from the new album, which really did push things up a gear. In particular, “Once Is Enough”, the howling “Love Comes On Silent Feet” and the Jamie Perrett-sung “Master of Destruction” were fine tunes and suggest that Humanworld will have more than its share of admirers when it is unleashed on the music-buying public. Similarly, set-closer, “War Plan Red” was truly magnificent, as Perrett made his views of American foreign policy crystal clear with its tales of “stars, stripes and swastikas”.
While Perrett’s set did largely concentrate on his recent solo output, there was plenty of room for some Only Ones’ classics and “From Here To Eternity” and “The Whole of the Law” made early appearances. However, when the ever-green “Another Girl, Another Planet” and greatest song about heroin not written by Lou Reed, “The Beast”, got an airing during the encore, the audience were emphatically reminded of Perrett’s well-deserved reputation in some quarters as one of England’s greatest chroniclers of society’s seedy underbelly. Indeed, given the treasure trove of tunes of doomed romanticism that Perrett has produced over the years, it seems insufficient to regard the man as just a songwriter: he should be in line to be the UK’s next Poet Laureate.
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